And One More for the Road
by Gutter Dreams
Summary: Boone tries to cope with the old and the new. [M!Courier/Boone]


Fireflies dressed in golden wings and bodies of chrome, making love on cream-colored winds rich with the scent of caps, fun, and sin. That is what the dazzling glow of New Vegas used to look like to her. Boone knows this because she once slurred it out over a bottle of pretty, red wine at the slots, with his glasses perched on the rim of her nose, and he never forgot. How brightly those golden fireflies are still dressed and how sweetly they still make love after their hotel room has deposited dust on her still, red shoes and her empty side of the mattress, her widower knows not.

He knows they burn white-hot like the smoking barrel of a gun from up high on a hill in the Mojave, though, and he knows they destroy just as painfully the chambers of the heart. His eyes, on the other hand, can't seem to get enough of them, watching them watch him from a distance and mockingly bathe him in more light than the moon could ever hope to.

His newly gained partner stares with abandon at the golden beckon in the darkness, all wide eyes and naive ambition and a mind dead set on completing impossible goals for the sake of his own entertainment. Boone could swear he is back in the NCR again with a fresh, pristine beret resting on his brow, an excited newborn grappling between impulse and discipline over the powerful machine in his hands. Luckily, the man still flutters around him like he's strapped with dynamite and one misplaced word could be the fatal spark, cautious and weary just like the day they first met. Boone thinks it's much easier that way.

After a night of switching and fumbling over a single bed they came across under a metal shanty by the road, when morning hits and an alarm set on the Pip-boy rings into the air, Boone chooses to watch his companion's sunlit back bob before him in place of the now indistinguishable lights of New Vegas. He's still the small, young man wrapped in the same repaired leather armor that he was wearing when he first threw open the door to the sniper's nest without so much as a knock. One shot would have ended all this in its tracks, one nervous twitch of the finger at the way he burst through the door and greeted Boone with a "Woah!", like he was the one allowed to be surprised. Boone would like to tell himself his decision to leave was made more on the promise of reducing the Legion to rubble and less on the boy's natural charisma coupled with his own very loose grip on life, and thinks about such things often at times like these, when the sun is reaching its zenith and the boy is floating through towns like a social butterfly, making conversation with nearly everyone. Everyone but Boone, the sniper notices as he tags along, which honestly tickles him pink.

It seems the boy flashes his teeth and suddenly every person and their mother is running to him, asking favors and issuing orders and putting in requests and offering information, and he records all of the attention on his Pip-boy with a kind of giddy excitement. Boone is more than happy to stand on the sidelines and only step forth when push comes to shove.

Once the courier finishes fiddling with the machine on his arm, he starts walking again, which means Boone starts walking, too. A cazador explodes into tiny bits of orange wing and bug fluids from almost half a mile away, and his young companion looks back at him and whistles like he watched someone win the jackpot. Boone meets his eyes for a second from behind the shadow of his shades and gives a nod of acknowledgment, but otherwise has nothing to say. The boy's attention is solely on him now, though, and he knows from experience that there's no hope of escaping it. The courier starts walking backwards in long strides directly in front of Boone, and, as the sniper matches his every step, their bodies stay an equal distance apart.

"Damn good shot with that," the courier says, and Boone suspects he means it as less of a compliment and more as a conversation starter.

He watches the boy's light brown hair capture the sunlight above his young, reckless face and hums. "Mhm."

"Do you think you could ever teach me to shoot like that?"

It doesn't need much deliberation. "Sure."

This spawns a smile of excitement, the boy still fluidly bouncing away from Boone while the other advances towards him. "Can you teach me right now?'

The sniper glances over the courier's shoulder at the long expanse of orange and yellow that seems to stretch forever. "No."

His face falls like a dropped bomb, and, when he pivots around on his heel to walk normally without nearly as much pep in his step, Boone only feels a little bad. "Psh. C'mon. We don't really have a whole lot else to do."

"We have everything to do," Boone reminds him, though the kid never needs a reminder. He knows better than anyone exactly how much he's bit off to chew.

"Some things are more important than others," he mumbles, but Boone doesn't know what to say to that and then the conversation is over.

* * *

Who could have guessed that the fireflies of New Vegas dimmed over time, that somewhere between finding love in the bright eyes of a city girl and murdering murderers until hands turn into machines, the gold curled up under hot, dry pavement and faded to dust.

The souls of Freeside watch the courier's every step like he's made of heaven and salvation, and Boone just follows and regards the dead gold under his feet. Almost as gold as the faded glory of the Strip. Almost as gold as entire Mojave. Almost as gold as the hair of that beautiful angel of a doctor at Old Mormon Fort.

Boone stands quite a ways off, rubbing at a new scuff on his rifle every time they visit, which is quite frequently. Every time the courier leans in close and laughs like a perfect gentleman, whispering things that Boone would like to pretend he can't hear, but the pleas of "just come with me", "we'll make such a team", and "I know you want to" make his fingers ache for a big gun and a pack of Legionaries. Every time, the doctor glances his way, bashful and apologetic, and whispers back that it's nothing personal, it's just that three's a crowd.

It's not the issue of the boy being something of a "confirmed bachelor"; Boone had a feeling of that all along and it's not his business at all what the guy chooses to do with his love life anyway. But when his companion is obviously trying hard to coerce another person into his spot, a spot that the courier asked him to fill in the first place, it becomes his business.

He does something he's never done before in all their dumb travels across the Mojave and steps around the courier as he pauses for a bit to pat at the pockets of a decaying Fiend in the expanse outside Westside. When the boy rises and turns, his nose almost bumps into Boone's cheek and he just about flails backwards, almost tripping over the dead body.

"Hey..." he says, chuckling at the situation and looking at the darkness of Boone's shades. "Sorry about that."

"Why don't you just tell me to go?" It's a strong demand, maybe a little more harsh than he meant it, but he's so close to shoving all the shit he has stored in his pockets and packs into the courier's where it belongs and trekking back to the empty hotel room he long ago bought from the dead woman who sold his wife and unborn child.

"What...?" A smile is still on his lips, and he reaches forward to pat Boone on the shoulder. "What are you talking about? Why would I want you to leave? We're suppose to put Caesar's head on a pike together, remember?"

Boone knows the hand is on his shoulder, though his mind barely even recognizes it against his body. "Don't insult me. I might not be some pretty-boy doctor, but I'm not dumb, and I'm not deaf. And I know when I'm not wanted."

A smile blossoms on the courier's face and begs for a fist to wipe it off. Boone is this close. "Ahaha. Seriously? Do you really think I would actually tell you to hit the road over that guy? Wow." He tilts his head and smiles just as sweetly as he smiles at the angelic doctor. "Boone, come on, you know you're my one and only."

He's messing with him now. Boone knows that, but it makes him feel a little better if not a little foolish over the role he's playing in this. If a couple ever had a squabble over suspicions of cheating, hell, they would have to try hard to rival this stupid squabble happening on the outskirts of Westside between a sniper and a courier.

"Right," Boone murmurs, stepping back and seeing the humor in this situation as well, though refusing to show it in any way. The threat he sees is not as light as the boy makes it seem; there is a delicate scale balancing between wasting away to nothing in a musty hotel room and making something of life while there's still something left to make of it, and that whole situation back in the fort had it tipping a little more towards wasting away.

The courier must see something he doesn't however - he always does, just how Boone sees things he doesn't as well - because he laughs and leans over to grasp his knees and bounces in place all within a few seconds. His mood is fatally infectious, slipping through Boone's resolve and breaking the scale altogether.

"Alright, alright," Boone says, letting light into his voice this time. "Pardon me for being a little jealous, I guess. I thought I was going to have to hightail it back to Novac because someone else caught your eye."

"Boone," his partner sighs out his giggles and looks right into his eyes through the sunglasses, and maybe it's the angle he's standing at, but Boone swears he can see the golden lights of New Vegas from behind him in the courier's pupils. "What kind of jerk would I be if I dropped you for some random guy? We're in this together, you know. When the Legion goes down, the world better be damn sure you're standing right there beside me. I mean that."

His smile fades as he says those last words, like he's dead serious, like he absolutely means it, and it's times like these that Boone believes again there's worth to be found from putting faith in other people. "Maybe. Maybe we'll have a better shot if you knew how to fire one of these correctly."

The boy's eyes light up like it's Christmas.

* * *

The first and last time the courier gripped his sniper rifle and pulled the trigger against something living and breathing was on a shore where purity smelled more like rotting fish and water-logged metal.

He'd taken up the offer to deliver a message to Ranger Station Alpha for the NCR - once a courier, always a courier - but Boone didn't ask questions when he veered off course and started looping towards Lake Mead. The sun was a killer, as much as any gun or sharp or blunt instrument could ever be, maybe even worse, because most of the time people didn't see heat exhaustion creeping up until it was noticeable enough to be too late. Boone followed his lead, and, when the kid dropped down on his knees to cup lake water into his mouth with both hands, Boone stepped out onto the wooden dock and took a seat.

He cared for the man's health, but he wasn't worrying himself into a pit about it. By the looks of him, the courier had survived at least 20 years by himself long before Boone came along, so coddling was out of the question. Instead, he gathered the ten bottles of dirty water in his pack, carried them over to the shore to empty them out on the hard rock, and re-bottled them with the clean, pure water of Lake Mead. The courier was still laying on his belly and sipping at water when he returned to his spot on the dock.

He remembers spinning in a complete circle out on that dock, trying to finish something he knows he can't, looking for the dim lights of fireflies on the horizon, but he was never too good at directions, and New Vegas is much too far away. Maybe the flies are dancing behind a tall, rocky hill, or maybe the sun's just too bright, but, either way, Boone's learned that when they don't want to be seen, they don't want to be seen.

He remembers setting all of his bulky equipment on the moist wood, both of his packs and his sniper rifle, feeling safe enough with the courier gulping at his back to settle into a mistake of carelessness. He just remembers not being able to see the lights and then, because of that, not wanting to see much of anything at all.

Regardless of what he wants, when the thunder of a gunshot rings into the air, he's up on his feet within a second, bleary-eyed and drowsy and hating himself in vain for drifting off to sleep in the first place. The courier is standing close to him, on the edge of the dock, squinting out towards the lake and holding his rifle like he's carrying a squirming cat.

"Lakelurks sneakin' up on us..." he mutters. He sounds out of breath, and his words are slurred like there's something wrong with him.

Boone snatches the rifle out of his hands, maybe a little too rough because the kid makes a hissing noise like he's been hurt, but when a Lakelurk's scaly head bobs above the surface of the water a few feet away and it opens its mouth about to shriek, part of its head is missing before it can even get its mouth open wide enough, and Boone doesn't give a shit if the boy's hands are nicked up or not. What's important is that he still has a brain to register that his hands are there.

As the Lakelurk's body sinks below the surface of the water, Boone gathers his stuff and continues to kick himself in the ass about how incredibly _stupid_ he was to drift off next to a kid who was damn near dying of dehydration. Some stand-up companion he is.

"Why didn't you use one of your own damn guns?" he bites, shoving new ammo into his rifle and scanning the water as he walks toward the shore. Why didn't his partner wake him up, why didn't Boone feel it when the other pulled the sniper out from under his thigh where he'd put it when he laid back, why didn't they scan the area for enemies on his fancy ass Pip-boy before either of them let their guards down.

Boone's sluggish with sleep and comfortably warm from the sun and pissed off at nothing in particular, especially when there is no response from behind him, only the thud of a heavy body dropping to the thick wood of the dock. The kid has a concussion. It was noticeable the moment he opened his mouth and slurred out those lazy words, because Boone's had enough encounters with Lakelurks to know exactly what their sonic shriek can do to a person at point-blank.

"I just wanted to- God, my head..." the courier groans, sitting cross-legged and holding his head in his hands. "I can't see."

"Use a doctor's bag," Boone tells him over his shoulder, short and professional. He cares for the man's health, but coddling is out of the question. However, when he turns to spy the courier hunched over like a cornered animal and downing a bottle of hydra, he considers coddling worthy of being part of the equation.

I don't have any doctor's bags is the excuse. A following week of trembling and hyperactivity is the result. Boone shows him more properly how to hold and aim down the sights of a sniper rifle should it ever come to that, close-quarter lessons that go on for longer than it takes them to journey back to Camp Forlorn Hope and straight into the medical tent for something to chase away all the fatigue and dizziness and bad decisions made by the both of them.

He did nick his partner's hands, Boone realizes, because he sees the healing scratches when the courier reaches up to wipe sweat from his brow. The doctor just smiles and calls him "my little buttercup" while he administers a cure, and Boone pockets as much Fixer as they can afford until his packs are full and his hands are shaking like he's been the one pouring toxic chemicals into his body the second he said yes to taking that first step out of Novac. The courier's seeking, dilated eyes scream that he is.

Two weeks later, the kid complains of a phantom ache in his leg and pops some hydra he picked off of a dead Legionnaire to help with it, and Boone _knows_ that he is.

* * *

His hands are hard and rough from handling too many weapons and searching too many stiff corpses. Their caress is nothing like her soft, cold touch once was; it doesn't seep nearly as deep or tingle as much under his skin. He would like to tell himself that he has no idea how he got here, sprawled under the fading fluorescent lights of a world that only exists in memory and clutching handfuls of dirty leather, as a young man whose hands he puts his life into breathes out hot carbon dioxide and fairy tales of life-long love and happiness, but he knows exactly how they got here.

It's different this way. It's easier. It doesn't remind him of her at all. A man's body is nothing like a woman's, especially a man who must rely on his physical ability to keep himself alive in this world. He can just close his eyes and not feel her at all. Can't he?

"I've got your back," he once said, and they both know he meant it, but when lips kiss a trail from his ear to his cheek for the first time since his wife was stolen in the night, his mind screams for him to make it stop. Not only does his partner back off when his mouth forms the words his mind is screaming, but he ceases contact all together, lays beside him on an even plane, and builds a castle of equality between them. It's a damn fine line between I've got your back and I want you for as long as I can have you, but Boone holds hope that they're not too far off from one another.

"It's okay. It's cool. It's cool."

Boone wants to believe him more than anything.

When he takes a deep breath, the courier takes one as well and breathes it out into a laugh. He does that a lot, Boone notices. "Shit... I trust you, Boone. With my life. I always will. And I know you trust me."

He rolls onto his side to look at Boone, propped up on one elbow. The rusted zipper holding the front of his leather armor closed is undone a bit. They still aren't on a first name basis because they don't need to be; they both know they don't need to be. It's just different that way. It's easier. It just doesn't help that, to Boone, easier feels like an insurmountable volcano.

"How can I be sure?" Boone asks the metal ceiling. He's not even sure what he's asking, to be honest. His beret is off, which is making him nervous, and his mouth tastes like Fixer because the courier's mouth tasted like Fixer.

He's only been intimate with three people in his life, and all three of them were girls and one of three was Carla. Love was the catalyst to each encounter, or what he believed at the time was love, but what he feels now is nothing like love, not even close, and he means to ask the courier if he feels the same way or something else entirely, but the only thing that comes out of his mouth is that bullshit, meaningless question that doesn't even deserve an answer.

The courier gives him one, regardless, in the form of a hand on one cheek and whispering lips against the other. "You can't, I guess."

Instead of asking him what he's talking about, Boone just closes his eyes and pretends to see fireflies dancing in the darkness. Before long, he feels their kisses all over his body.

* * *

The cancerous brains of the old man who haunted his nightmares are splattered all over the side of the tent, and it feels _good_. The courier is yelling and hollering and laughing behind him as he picks off the speechless Legionaries that continue to fight for something that no longer exists. They carved their way through countless men to get here, and the courier paused just long enough to let Boone take the shot they both knew he needed to take. It only took one bullet to finish the job, but Boone's finger is still squeezing the trigger and he lost count at around eight.

The Legion is falling, and the courier is standing right there beside him, just like he said, just like he promised he would be. It's all smiles and congratulations and laughter as the courier pilfers through the seeping, hole-riddled thing that is Caesar's corpse. Oddly enough, Boone can't bring himself to get close to it like his partner can; it's not that he feels bad for his actions - no, thumbs down, you son of a bitch - but every glance at his headless torso just brings back too many crippling memories. Even now, at the end of it all, he lets the courier handle the dirty work, and even though they're making their way out of the encampment with their pockets and pouches close to bursting and smiles gracing both of their lips, Boone wonders what is left for him out there in the world now that he's done the thing his life has been dedicated to for so long.

As his partner hands him a clip of bullets with a gentle smile on his lips, his fingers remain for a little too long on his skin, and Boone has to look away.

"So... Guess I don't have a lot left to fight for now, huh," he says it calm with the hopes that it will pass quickly, that it will all be over soon like a shot to the head as opposed to a shot to the foot.

When the courier stops moving completely to look at him with a frown, Boone knows he's just shot the both of them in the foot. "What do you mean?"

Attempting to take the easy way out, Boone adjusts his beret and plays the fool. "Caesar's dead."

"I know."

"I was fighting to take down the Legion. To kill Caesar."

"I know."

"...Okay."

The courier breathes out very heavily, and, true to tradition, a laugh follows soon after. His eyes are still lit up like gunfire. "Okay. Well. There's still a hell of a lot left to fight for. The Legion's not down yet, buddy."

It's more of a test, he'll admit it. It's more to see if, way back when, when he asked a dumb question instead of asking an important one, if he made the right decision in choosing to avoid it like the plague.

"And when the Legion is down..." he pries, tip-toeing shamelessly.

"Then you decide what you want to fight for next."

The courier smiles one of those amazing, impossible smiles, _nothing_ like one of her thin, tight-lipped smiles, _nothing _like one of her sweet, ruby smiles, but something else entirely that makes Boone continue to follow him past the Fiends and the squalor and the dead and towards the lights of New Vegas.

Boone's saved his life more times than either of them can count, and the courier saved his life the second he burst through the door of the sniper's nest back in Novac. Saved his life at Bitter Springs and saved his life back there in Caesar's tent. Boone just doesn't know how much longer they can continue to save each other before someone slips up and everything perfect turns to dead gold. It always seems to. He recognizes that he's got his whole life ahead of him and he recognizes that he just did the impossible, he just killed _Caesar_, and that should make him feel like he's on top of the world. He does, in a way that courses through his veins like wildfire, until it reaches his brain and starts clogging all of his arteries. He can do anything. Anything! The question is does he want to.

When they get to the courier's room in the Atomic Wrangler, the kid embraces him like they're long lost lovers, snaking his arms around Boone's waist and leaning his warm body against him. He smells like Fixer again, but Boone decides he doesn't care. Some things are more important than others.

"You worry so much," the courier murmurs into his neck. The way his stubble rubs against his collarbone makes Boone close his eyes. "You never make any sense to me."

"Yeah... I never make any sense to myself, either." His arms find their way around his partner, over the hard metal of the shotgun strapped to his back. It's different. It's easier. "...What are you gonna fight for now?"

The other laughs, though Boone doesn't see why, he rarely sees why, and detaches himself from his companion, slapping his shoulder like they've gone from somewhat lovers to old buddies in a split second. "Whatever I see worthy of fighting for."

The courier turns to the bed and crosses the large, faded rug on the floor, kicking off his boots and complaining about how tough it was to take down that group of Legionaries today. Boone stands by the door and watches and listens.

He tries one last attempt to accept it, to smile at this thing that's not quite love and not quite golden fireflies, and to find something that's worthy of fighting for, not something to dedicate his life to but something healthy to keep his mind focused on and far, far away from consuming thoughts of musty hotel rooms and dirty red shoes, thoughts that will surely shorten his lifespan if he lets them. He tries and succeeds.


End file.
